An update on the pests and diseases in my garden.
Coming in at number 4 in the Chart of Pain...blackfly - last year's out of the blocks winners. They decimated the Red Devil apple and the Heptacodium Jasminoides but their 2013 effort seems so far not to be quite as pithy....I have soapy water at the ready to spray the little buggers if they turn up.
This year's highest new entry is blossom wilt - my Granny Smith - a wonderful old tree that we inherited with the garden has already lost a considerable number of shoots and I am watching with some anxiety to see how it spreads. So far we have cut off the infected parts but I'm loathe to spray partly because I don't like chemicals and partly because it's too big a tree to treat easily. It still feels very cold to me especially at night for the time of year and I just hope things warm up a bit to inhibit the fungal growth, although I have no scientific evidence that this will make any difference, and hey - this is the UK!
Another new entrant for the Nice Tree garden is - for the first time since we moved here - powdery mildew, which is busy attacking one of my climbing roses (small pink flowers, don't know the variety) . This, despite being cosseted within an inch of its life. There's no pleasing some plants!
And finally, news on the Cherry Sunburst - apparently amazing sweet fruit, not that I'd know. Every single ripe and delicious cherry was eaten by birds last year. This year every single pea-sized unripe and almost certainly not delicious cherry has been eaten by something again....along with all the leaves. Pigeons? Caterpillars? So I will be cherry deprived again and am wondering really, how on earth to people end up with any fruit at all?
These things are sent to try us blah blah blah....and actually there a loads of great things happening too...the ceanothus is putting on its usual fabulous display and covered with bees, my Tetrapanax is growing strongly and my Abutilon x Suntense is bedecked with most delicate violet flowers despite having been out unprotected during a very cold winter indeed.
Filming today at the Earth Trust in Little Wittenham as part of their drive to promote carbon footprint reduction...will post pictures later!
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Have a great day!
